Amazon.com Inc. said Thursday it’s hiring 75,000 workers for its sprawling North American logistics operation, a sign that the company expects increased demand to outlast the pandemic.

The world’s largest online retailer hired some 500,000 workers last year as it sought to meet a surge in online demand when millions of consumers hunkered down at home amid the outbreak. With the U.S. economy starting to recover, companies are struggling to find enough workers.

The new hires in the U.S. and Canada will receive US$100 if they’re already vaccinated for COVID-19, Amazon said in a blog post on Thursday announcing the plans. Their average starting pay will be more than US$17 an hour, and the company is offering signing bonuses of as much as US$1,000.

Amazon employed 1.3 million people at the end of March. Most of those jobs are in the company’s operations group, which stores packages, sorts them and hands them off to delivery contractors.